


Ghosts I Have Been

by englandwouldfalljohn



Series: The After Life [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Between the bench and the Ritz, Narrative, Not Beta Read, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), thirtyminutethursday, what Aziraphale learned during The Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:49:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25876960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englandwouldfalljohn/pseuds/englandwouldfalljohn
Summary: Aziraphale processes what he learned about Crowley during The Swap.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: The After Life [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1703005
Comments: 9
Kudos: 32





	Ghosts I Have Been

**Author's Note:**

> For thirtyminutethursday, a tumblr challenge wherein we write for 30 minutes, do a quick edit for SPaG, and post!
> 
> Seven, by my count  
> Ghosts I have been:  
> Three drinkers  
> Three poets  
> And one who  
> would choose

They’d have you believe it was always hot, Hell. But in the beginning, it was cold as anything. Dark. Not the eerie grim aesthetic they’ve achieved now, but really, properly dark. Because back then, in the beginning, it wasn’t a  _ place. _ It was an absence. The absence of Her. Each stuttering inhale brought a wave of ice inside, a nasty chemical-spill breath that brittled the soul. They couldn’t speak, couldn't rally; they couldn’t do precisely what they’d done to earn such a heinous fate. Slowly, slowly, day by piercing netherworldly day, they fell. Not from Heaven; no, that was already well and done. They fell into their foreverness. Into the depths of their own despair, until it was only the cloying vile layer left to tread water. Some say it was the Morningstar who brought the heat, but others—The First—they know it was this. The burning off of their collective goodness, the flames rising from the destruction of hope. And so each in turn became that into which they were cast, the perfect products of a broken mold. 

All except him.

Crowley became more base, surely. More crude and sarcastic a soul than what he had been born, but not cruel. Never, never cruel. For there was something in him which was not in the others. Something which had burrowed to the very heart of him. Something quite unmistakably love. Yes, it was love which saved Crowley, which kept the burning from reaching the core of his immortal soul. The simplest, most innate desire of humanity kept him from becoming one of them. This love which he held, from the murky origins of life-before-time, should likely have been reserved for Her. For her Goodness, Her Graciousness, Her—well, certainly not her forgiveness. And so, no. It was not for Her that this angelic clutch of love was preserved. 

How could their forms have persevered over the Prince, the Archangel, and the elements of destruction, holy and unholy alike, Aziraphale had wondered. Now he need wonder no more. For it had not been they who won the day, in the end. It had been him, Crowley, and the inexplicably unwavering virtue held safe within his very essence. For they had known each other once, Aziraphale learned, left alone with not only Crowley’s Body, but the memories which flowed through that mind, those veins, that beating beating beating heart. Perhaps it was too close to his Awakening to isolate them from the haze of his beginning, or perhaps he had been robbed of his own recollection in the aftermath. But Crowley—dear, sweet, tenacious creature that he was—had held him, clutched him, had guarded that fresh-faced wondering angel Aziraphale, in his desperate, unyielding grasp for millennia and beyond. 

And what could he give him now? Now he’d returned to his skin. Now the past was theirs, and the future as well. What could this wretched, wandering, lost Principality offer that could possibly match, that could ever measure to the blessing of being remembered? Perhaps… there was one thing. One other thing Crowley cherished, reveled in, adored. He raised his glass, and toasted with all the emotion he could command, to that beautiful creation which Crowley loved almost, it seemed, almost as much as him.

‘To the world.’


End file.
